# Norb's Writing Thread



## norblarchoop (Oct 12, 2015)

Alright peeps, nobody fucking knows me, 'cause I never fucking talk.

I'm was looking for a place to put my experimental writing on the internet, when I remembered these forums. The culture of intelligence will serve as a fitting foreground for my fumbling attempts.

More importantly, grammar and spelling are important to you all, my fellow insectoid denizens.

Happy reading, ignoring, or criticizing of my work.


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## norblarchoop (Oct 12, 2015)

It was dark when they reached the cavern. Rushing past the mouldering stones at the edge of the clearing, they stumbled, falling against the doorway. The nameless leader looked around, dismayed to see less than a dozen survivors. Grinding and sawing noises bore into their tired ears from the forest behind as the kid simply lost it.

He'd made the mistake of opening the door. Rather, he'd tried, but despite it's age, the door still hung solidly shut. Wedged between its one remaining rusty hinge, and altogether newer lock, the solid wooden door resisted his frantic efforts to subdue it by force. To the horror of his companions, he emptied two clips into the door, scarring the wood, but nothing more. When he pulled the trigger on the second empty clip, he dropped his gun entirely and sobbed, falling to his knees and clawing at the door. The leader attempted to calm him, pulling him away from the door and speaking in a low voice as others attempted to work the uncooperative lock. Finally, as starlight gave way to the shadow of a huge looming shape behind then, the door creaked open.


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## norblarchoop (Oct 12, 2015)

Ignoring any debris left in the cabin's one room, they rushed toward the back wall. This time, the kid saw desperation from the outside as everyone searched fruitlessly along every crack and seam on the back wall. Eyes still red from the grimy tears of terror, he spoke calmly, as though hearing himself from a great distance. His voice was a croak for the first word, growing to a whisper.

"It can't see us. It would have us by now. It can't see us."

Indeed he was right. The faceless leader slowly set them bedding down for the night, even seconds after their panic, always speaking to the travelers with a hand on their shoulder, but never seeming to touch anything besides. Eventually the kid shut the door, ignoring as much as he could the huge metal wall inches outside. He tried not to think how recently he had been sobbing and raging in those inches.

----End freewriting 1----


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## norblarchoop (Oct 26, 2015)

It was dark when they reached the cabin. Warm friendly lights shone through the curtained windows, and warm laughter sounded faintly from within. The travelers poured into the yard, milling about, arguing about who should go first. Nervously, they paused on the doorstep until a protesting member of the group was shoved forward and rang the doorbell.

There was a lull among the cheery voices, but they rose again in conversation as a smiling woman opened the door. She surveyed the group with some trepidation. Finally, she declared "you won't fit in the living room. We'll have to use the back yard." Enthusiastic chatter broke out, and the poor women was soon buried in old friends. Each seeking to ask, separately, what she had been up to in the past year. Doors were propped open in the front and the back as people poured into and out of the house. Through the tight crowd, a brave pair of souls attempted to maneuver tables out into the yard.
Eventually, the chaos settled down. Old friends and new friends alike ate and drank, making merry long into the night. As the party broke up, a drunken diner careened against the wall to the laughter of all. Unnoticed by anyone, a thin, sharp piece of metal shook loose from between the shingles and fell to the ground. Someone gathered a pile of dishes, teetered through the crowd, and plopped them in the sink for next morning. The house was simply not big enough for everyone to sleep comfortably, but the night was warm, and the grass was soft. A good few guests spend a pleasant night outside beneath the stars.


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## norblarchoop (Nov 3, 2015)

It was dark when they reached the cabin. Though the day was neither grey nor cold, a certain gothic chill stung their throats with every breath. The invisible fingers of death flicked at their elbows. Like the tongue of a lover felt in a dream. A vague sense of uneasiness permeated the company, contrasted by the cheery stars overhead, the warm autumn breeze, the crickets and frogs. Only a faint smell of decay lent any credibility to the notion that all was not right.

The cabin door wasn't locked, but at first no one entered. Pausing at the door, the seeking children huddled together. What had started as a fun expedition was, quite suddenly, more frightening than any logic could explain. Without knowing why, the quietest of them walked forward. He licked his lips, imagining for a second the insects whose legs he used to pull off. One time he'd heard a squeak from behind the pantry, and found a crushed mouse, still warm. This door, this friendly night air, felt equally full of potential. Suddenly eager, he threw open the door and leapt in, ignoring his friend's horrified gasps. The room was everything he could have hoped for, horrible and nightmarish.

There was no blood on the walls, no body strung in a painful scene of recent torture. There was no peaceful corpse, no intimate, tender deathbed of a smiling, contented soul. In fact, there wasn't a single body visible. What could be seen was bones. Ribs, hips, skulls poked out of the walls and floor. Crushed, ground and unrecognizable chunks of white meal, and a sickening reddish brown meal of decaying meat covered the floor. Mushrooms grew on top, and the pile was several feet deep against one wall. Stringy skeins of mold trailed alone the slick, brown surface, greying at the edges. Toward the back of the room, the remains were older, more decayed, more like dirt. At the back window, a small sapling grew in visually ordinary dirt, its branches peacefully reaching toward the glass. Sitting on the rotting sill, a line of fingerbones stretched, laid next to each other. As the fascinated child leaned forward, one hand on the doorframe, his flashlight caught a more pressing sight out the window. A hammock, still swinging, could be seen between two trees behind the cabin. Someone had woken up!

The rest was a blur. Loud footsteps came running around the cabin. The children yelled and scattered. Vague memories of shouting, a huge figure with dark metal in hand, and a sharp pain in his wrist. He must have struggled, twisted, freed his arm from the man’s grip. As he ran, the agonized yells of other children hinted that they weren’t so lucky. None of the others made it back, and he didn’t go back to find them. Finally, in solitary, he stumbled, half running, half sleeping, into his own bed. The next morning he burrowed into the pantry, behind the cans, and with a systematic malice previously reserved for struggling butterflies, sprung and bent every mousetrap.


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## norblarchoop (Nov 13, 2015)

It was dark when he reached the bank. The early evening traffic thinned a bit, but there was still a sizeable line before the counter. Shouldering his briefcase, and pulling his scarf high to hide his face, he swaggered past the line.

Clunk! He lay a small pistol, decked out with a silencer (more expensive than the pistol itself) on the counter. Loudly, he spat the line he'd practiced a thousand times in the mirror.

"I would like to make a withdrawal!"

The teller didn't look up. He scribbled something on a pad. "Back of the line, sir, you don't get to cut the line."

Cowed, the bank robber slunk to the back of the line. In front of him, a pair of blond and blonde Russians  dragged automatics along the floor. They were locked in discussion with a short, fat man (or possibly a women) who wore a gorilla suit and carried a can of tear gas.

"Really, you'd sink the line would be shorteR zis time of day," said the Blond. This drew an untranslatable grunt from the gorilla suit.  At the front of the line, a skinny street kid with jagged teeth was politely menacing the teller with a length of aluminum piping. "You need another form of ID to open an account," the teller said placidly.


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## norblarchoop (Nov 14, 2015)

It was early morning when she reached the cabin. Cold drizzle dripped through her torn rags, and the numbing club of nine hours walk had dulled her senses. She kept hoping for voices, thorns, rabid animals. Anything interesting, anything to give her life meaning. 

Leaning against the door, she slid down, feeling the imagined tingle of some phantasm taking her from behind. Teeth on her neck where some wild predator would snap her dead before she could feel it. A rush in her mind where some half imagined horror of shadows and fear would simply devour her sanity. She yelled out, forehead pressed against the door. "COME ON! YOU CAN'T HURT ME!"

Her taunt went unanswered. The early morning stillness, broken by buzzing wings of small birds as they fled the echoed shout, was painfully lacking in malice. She would have given anything for a moments attention of the worst sort, but loneliness is its own enforcer. Not a soul missed her or managed to remember her name as she stomped through the door, leaving it unlocked, hoping for murderers or robbers.

She fell into her soft, empty bed, throttling the blanket. Her sleep was the instant sleep of the truly tired, unmoved by peace or happiness. She wished she could manage to cry.


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## norblarchoop (Nov 27, 2015)

There's a city where more than half of the population is main characters. Secret spies pass each other on the street, chasing each others true alliances. The chosen spirit of the grand tree sits in meditation in a small chapel, her peaceful silence never hinting at the terrible mental battles she endures. Zombies and Zombie hunters come out at night, the latter armed with saws, fishing knives, bats, and other instruments of bodily destruction. AI people walk around, vying with the oldschool hackers for control of the city's financial infrastructure, while dark elves from the world underground kidnap anything that moves into slavery. An old master of 1000 swords lives humbly on the streets; no one knows how he eats without begging. Chaos ebbs and flows between the tall buildings (filled with super-villains, hidden technology and in one case a 90 story wheel of cheese) and nothing can tell what will change tomorrow.


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